While I would love to address the comments of people who claim that it
crashes after one or two levels (our platform testing on a dozen
platforms revealed no such pattern, and I can play for dozens of levels
with no trouble) that they had the bad luck to encounter one of the few
platform bugs, at the same time I'm a bit worried that being able to
send a private message directly to the user would result in "comment
blackmail", where users could demand a free copy in exchange for
removing bad comments.
A public reply to a comment, on the other hand, that is displayed along
with the comment, would allow a developer to appear responsive, while
the current situation leaves it ambiguous (Did the bug the user is
talking about get fixed? Does the feature still not exist?). It would be
appropriate (best, even) if the comment reply was ALSO sent to their
email, so they're sure to notice it, in which case they might choose to
change their comment/rating in response. But it would be subject to
abuse; I wouldn't necessarily rate an app badly if I knew that the app
writer could spam me repeatedly to try to get me to change it, so it
would need to be limited to one email per comment posted/updated.
Also keep in mind that adding such a reply feature would necessarily
raise the expectations of users; if someone posted a negative comment,
and there was no response, it would be far worse than if your app's
negative comments all had replies. As it stands, since no one can reply,
negative comments have to be taken with a grain of salt. If you can
reply but don't -- or more to the point, if your competitor replies but
you don't -- then the negative comments get that much more weight. In
that case, if you've got an app that appeals worldwide, better pull out
Google Translate and hope it does a good job with languages you don't
know. :)
Tim
On 1/10/2012 3:09 PM, William Ferguson wrote:
Even just the ability to respond privately would be of of high value.
I'd love to be able to point out to the one star ratings why it's not
doing what they think it should be doing. It's already there as a
single clear sentence in the second line of the app description, but
obviously comprehension is not a universal skill.
It can be depressing getting such inane and often vitriolic comments
and having no means of informing them of their misunderstanding or
otherwise setting the record straight.
William
On Jan 11, 3:56 am, John Coryat<[email protected]> wrote:
This is what really bothers me about the current market comment system:
Alex on January 2, 2012 (vigor with version 3.5)
Bad permissions. Why does this simple radar app need to be able to write to
the SD card? DELETED!
Obviously, this user doesn't understand what the app does, nor what the
permissions mean. I can't respond to the comment and it just sits out there
forever.
I think it would be very useful if comments had to be tied to a Google+
account. That way, we could respond and also the number of anonymous hate
comments would drop.
Until the comment system is amended to allow developers to respond, it will
remain nothing more than a dumping ground for the ignorant and spiteful.
-John Coryat
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